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For my posts and the "chatting" of general car related activities and topics. Since being banned from another section of this forum by a certain tattle-tale, and by suggestion of a friend (mtnbound), I decided to create a place to "vent" all my car related thoughts and activities, of which there are a lot. It'll take a few posts to get everything up to speed, so bear with me through the slow intro. Enjoy!

My interest for cars started with my dad's car in the mid to late 90's while I was in elementary school. There was a certain bit of something special with my dad's 1994 Mercedes-Benz 300CE with jet black exterior and black leather interior, and the "tuner" he brought it to, who my family knew from being a neighbor from down the street. Specifically, the tuner's wife would walk their two big friendly sheep dogs up the street, which I loved to play with, lol. To somewhat of a surprise to both my dad and myself, one day the 300CE came back from the tuner with a few changes. What was originally just supposed to be new tires, changed to a new set of wheels and tires, to new wheels, tires, lowering spring, and new dampers. The lowering springs weren't even asked for, but they ended up coming with everything else, which was surprising and funny. The differences were barely noticeable in one sense, because the car could pass as completely stock, but at the same time, the car looked sooooooo much "cooler." The car looked much lower, wider, and sportier and it drove with a MUCH firmer ride. Only later did I find out or realize that the tires were Michelin Pilot Sport, the wheels BBS RX, the springs by H&R, and dampers Bilstein, definitely not a bunch of on-sale parts. This was my first experience with modded cars. This is also where I started to learn about cleaning and detailing cars a little, but I never really went too far into that area of cars, unlike some friends. It was a sad day when this car was sold, but it was exciting as well, because the 300CE got replaced with a new 2003 Porsche Carrera from the dealership!

The next big point in my automotive life, was when my brother gave me his old copy of Gran Turismo 3 and a Sony Playstation, I've been really interested in and enjoyed cars, beyond what I consider normal for most people. I loved the driving, and also, the tuning of the cars. There was something about trying hard and earning credits in the game, buying new parts, modifying things slightly to make the car better, and getting the most out of it that I really liked. From Gran Turismo, my interest branched out into more video games, car magazines that I asked my dad to subscribe to, and looking up specifications online to cars that I thought were cool. This continued through high school, until towards the end of high school (2006), I finally had my driver's license, and my dad said he might buy me a car since I would be going off to college soon and my sister would be learning to drive soon.

At this point, all my learned car knowledge from the internet and gran turismo came into effect. The price point was $15,000 max, (business was good for my dad at the time I guess, lol). For some reason my most important factors were that the car was front engine, rear wheel drive, and manual transmission. I also didn't want to get what I considered ricey, because at this point, I had already decided some cars were modified in a way that just made them look like total crap. My choices narrowed down to an E36 M3, E46 330i, and FD RX-7. What it came down to was that the RX-7s were just too rare and expensive, and I was on the fence about the really bulbous styling, and I decided the E36 was just kinda ugly and plain looking. This is where I started researching the E46, and came across E46Fanatics and my330i.com where I was inspired by people like PEI330CI. When the time came, my dad found a used 2001 330i sport package premium package steptronic in San Jose for $19,000. He ended up buy the car for $18,000, and after some driving back and forth because the owner forgot to sign something and wanted his "WENKI" license plates back I had a 330i! A month later, I joined E46Fanatics.com.

Here's a few of my pictures to get you started from my early years on this forum:

Part of my liking for cars, and science, which I've always had, made me decide that being a mechanical engineer would allow me to build cars some day. So that is what direction my classes took starting in high school. The elective classes though, I just picked whatever seemed fun.

After doing a year of Ceramics, I ended up taking photo classes, which I continued with through the most advanced level offered at my high school, which actually gave me college credit. Berkeley High strangely enough, has a really good and well equipped photo department, with really good teachers. We started taking pictures with black and white film, then learning to open them in a black bag entirely by feel and putting them into a container, and then developing the film there at school. From there we learned to use photo enlargers, and even developed our photo paper, all with the setup at school. In the second and third years, we also did color enlargements, though the class had much fewer students, the black room with actually pitch black instead of lit orange, and the photo developing was all hands off. I feel pretty happy in knowing that I'm one of the last few people that was educated in classic film photography.

ANYWAY... one of my photo class projects I combined with something else that came up. The same neighbor that tuned my dad's car back in the 90's, chatted with my dad, and asked if I wanted to go help him out with one of his customer's track cars. I didn't really know what to expect, but I loved cars, had never been to a race track, and was totally excited that I had my own DSLR(crazy to think my Nikon D50 is a decade old now) to bring with me. I think this was my junior year in high school. At the time I really had no clue about BMWs other than they were German, had cool race cars, and had cool street cars that were also James Bond cars Z3, Z8, E38, etc.. (before they became ugly).

I had to wake up super early on a Saturday morning, my neighbor picked me up from my house, we had to pick up one other mechanic who I was told was really weird, and that we would meet the customer and one of my neighbor's paid race car drivers at the track, who would also be doing some mechanic duties and helping train the customer, since as it turned out, had rented half of the Buttonwillow Raceway for a personal practice session. The other half of the track was rented to some formula cars sponsored by Lucas Oil. The car I was helping with ended up being an E36 M3 sedan prepared by PTG, so essentially a BMW factory race car. If I remember the rumors correctly, it sold for something like $250k and currently worth around $125k.

And the pictures I'm sure you guys care about way more than the story:

In summary(from what I can remember)
-Testing out camera settings was a stupid thing to do that day.

-Getting some laps around the track in an Infiniti SUV with a professional race car driver was terrifying and incredible. Going through the S-curves, he would hit the inside curbs and the inside wheels felt like they popped into the air for a short moment. The car was leaning like crazy and I thought we were all going to flip an die.

-The carbon fiber intake of the M3 was so huge it looked like you could fit a basket ball or a standing chihuahua inside it.

-The car had transmission problems all day, frequently getting stuck in gear, and when the car finally got stuck in one gear, the car just couldn't be driven any further, and that was the end of the day. Major disappointment when I was said I'd get some laps around the track in the passenger seat, but when the transmission broke, no more laps.

An all around awesome day though. The smells, sounds, and looks of that M3 were just amazing to be around, as was being at a race track for the first time. If only that transmission didn't break and the air in buttonwillow wasn't always full of smog and cow farts.

Anyway, I had to wake up super early on a Saturday morning, my neighbor picked me up from my house, we had to pick up one other mechanic who I was told was really weird, and that we would meet the customer and one of my neighbor's paid race car drivers at the track, who would also be doing some mechanic duties and helping train the customer, since as it turned out, had rented half of the Buttonwillow Raceway for a personal practice session. The other half of the track was rented to some formula cars sponsored by Lucas Oil. The car I was helping with ended up being an E36 M3 sedan prepared by PTG, so essentially a BMW factory race car. If I remember the rumors correctly, it sold for something like $250k and currently worth around $125k.

Uh, yeah, btw, did you realize at the time that the "customer" was Henry Schmitt, Owner/President of BMW of San Francisco?

lol, yeah, I knew. I was trying to refrain from being "that guy" who bragged about all the important people I knew. Kinda like that forum member who bragged about being P. Diddy's pool cleaner. Do no want to be THAT GUY.

I wonder if that car you posted is the same car with a new paint job or it's another car. From what I remember, Henry had a coupe and a sedan. The coupe being referred to as the CSL and the sedan being the PTG.

Hmm, while I'm at it and being "that guy", I think I know the previous owner of that M1.